Fitbits, Fuelbands, athletic bracelets, and fitness trackers are all the rage. Fitness tracking devices count calories, exercise, sleep, and steps taken throughout the day. It’s a numbers game, and at their best they give you insight into your health and help you stay or get into shape.
But some claim that they are backfiring. Whether it’s on forums, blogs, or on news segments like the one below, some people say that they’ve actually gained weight from using a fitness tracker.
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The Today show looked into these claims and found that these people were probably relying too much on the calorie numbers. Calorie counters, whether they’re tracking how much you need or how much you burned during the day, do not take into account individual factors like metabolism, hormones, sleep, and stress. Watch the segment in the video above.
Weight loss is more an art than a science. While we might like to think it’s a simple calculation of calories in and calories burned, most of us have numerous, fluctuating variables in our personal weight-loss equation.
